


visionary fallen

by ninemoons42



Category: The Sandman, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Book/Movie Fusion, Crossover, Dom/sub Undertones, Inspired by Fanart, Kneeling, M/M, Master & Servant, Nightmares, Obedience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 11:48:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/597414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42





	visionary fallen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keire_ke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keire_ke/gifts).



title: visionary fallen  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)**ninemoons42**  
word count: approx. 1040  
fandoms: X-Men: First Class [movieverse], The Sandman [DC/Vertigo]  
characters: Charles Xavier as Dream, Erik Lehnsherr as the Corinthian  
rating: R  
notes: Written for [this](http://keire-ke.tumblr.com/post/38097353523/woohoo-tonight-on-obscure-crossovers-although). Not much else to say, actually, except that I will never be as brilliant as keire-ke.

  
In this place of waiting there is no time, and there is no want.

Here he is content to stay until he is called for. Here he is held in readiness, wrapped in silence, wrapped in stillness.

Here he is surrounded by a distant quiet whisper, as if of wind sifting through great dunes and seas of sand. Drift and aimless faint song. Here he is surrounded by slither and ring, as if of ragged edges catching, a handful of broken coins, steel and iron and silver. Copper, and the bright tang of it catching on his teeth, in his throat. The blade of a knife. Glittering shattered light.

The world and worlds beyond this place will wait for him until he is needed again - and that day comes in shroud and winter’s heart. Comes with a voice that speaks a name, and the name belongs to him.

“Out of the dark, Corinthian,” that voice says.

In the darkness the newly-named reaches out with new hands, reaches up to his new - eyes. Yes, here, soft thin lips, hard teeth and their sharp edges. Now he smiles and he can feel all three of them.

Something stirs in his breast. Called back to serve, called back to the hunt, called back to stand watch? What is his purpose this time? What must he do now, and is the task an old one or a new? He wants to know.

He emerges from the dark.

Out, into shivering light and shifting shadow, and he falls at the feet of a great black shape, a hollow in this world of waiting: crowned in bone and lit in red. In its hands a pouch of sand, and a knife with a jagged edge.

“Look up,” that voice whispers, compelling. “Look on me. Do you recognize me? Do you know who I am, Corinthian?”

He should look up. He should not look up.

This is his creator. This is his unmaker.

He has been made and destroyed and recreated in order to carry out this being’s commands.

The Corinthian looks up.

A pale beautiful face full of strange angles. Hair like dark flames. Dark, fathomless eyes: blue. this being has blue eyes like drowned skies and sundered seas and shadows at dusk. The Corinthian stares into those indefinable depths, caught and transfixed and frozen, like the star that is suspended in the being’s left eye, coldly glittering.

“Fearless and reckless and powerful as you ever were. I remember this much of you,” his maker and unmaker murmurs.

The Corinthian freezes, suspended between fear and wonder and a slow-burning _need_ , as those gleaming eyes stare down at him. Stare _into_ him.

The being shifts, and the Corinthian remembers, vividly, the flames and faces flickering at the edges of those night-hued robes.

Sense-memory stirs within his skin, pricking and prickling and pleasant: the Corinthian remembers being laid out on those robes, silk and slick and sweat sliding across his skin. His past? His future? He cannot tell, but he can want, and now that desire sets a flame in him, leaves him burning and breathless.

A possibility, perhaps - but first he must please this new master, this new Dream-King.

If he can.

He wants to please his maker.

“Do you, now,” the black-clad being murmurs. When the Corinthian looks up, there is a faint smile playing at the edges of that mouth. “I know what you are thinking, my dear; I can read your thoughts plainly upon your face, in all of its grotesque beauty.” Cool fingers run over the Corinthian’s skin, inflaming him even further, as do the next words. “You serve me so very well every time I call upon you. I wear a different face now; still will you do my bidding?”

The Corinthian’s response dies unsaid on his tongue, leaving behind only one breathless sound: “I - ”

“Or shall I tell you your task and give you the choice, give you your freedom, such as it is?” the Dream-King murmurs. “Yes, I can be just, I can be fair, I can do that for you. I would not be worthy of you were I not so. If I neglect you I would be no master of yours.”

 _“Master,”_ the Corinthian echoes, trembling.

He does not flinch before gods or monsters or children; he has killed wolves with his bare hands, he has reached into flames and wrestled with the very wind and waves themselves.

Before this being he is helpless. Wretched. He has been destroyed by these hands before, and mocked for being petty and flawed.

Still, there is a part of him that exists to serve, and to serve only one master.

He makes up his mind, then, and he looks the Dream-King full in the face, unwavering. “What you wish me to do,” the Corinthian whispers, “you do not have to tell me, nor give me a choice. I will carry out your task with everything that I have.” He has to take another breath, and say, more clearly, “With everything that I am.”

The Dream-King moves, and for a brief instant the Corinthian catches a glimpse of his smile. A different smile: old and terrible. Knowing. Hidden meanings, never-ending depths, a thousand thousand possibilities.

And then there is a pale hand clamped around his wrist, drawing him forward; he shivers when he touches those black robes, when the Dream-King wraps his arm around his own waist before releasing him.

“Mine,” the Dream-King hisses, “ _mine_. Always.”

The Corinthian keeps looking up into that beautiful inscrutable face right up until the Dream-King covers his mouths-for-eyes with one pale hand and touches his jaw with the other.

A command ringing in his ears, now, setting claws into his skin that he cannot and will not deny. “Say it,” the Dream-King whispers.

With every breath he feels that black eternity consuming him, coiling around the very heart of him. A star in his grasp, bluer than midnight, flicker-flaming, terrifying, and something he cannot be without.

The Dream-King says, “Tell me, Corinthian. _Name yourself._ ”

“Yours.”

“Again.”

“I am yours.”

“Once more.”

He does not question; he obeys, and _is_. “I am yours, Dream-King.”

“Yes.”

The kiss, when it comes, burns everything away.  



End file.
